Last week (October 12-14), seventy participants came to CMAA’s Fall Sacred Music Workshop at St. Benedict Abbey in Still River, Massachusetts for three days of learning and performing chant and polyphony amid the beautiful hills of Central New England.
Starting on Thursday afternoon we prepared the plainchant Mass XII, which we sang on Friday afternoon for a votive Mass of the Sacred Heart, offered in the abbey’s chapel by Abbot Marc Crilly, OSB.
We also began to study Palestrina’s Missa Pater noster, a charming Mass taking the plainchant melody of the Pater noster as its main motif.
The Palestrina was sung at the workshop’s closing Mass on Saturday at Saint Cecilia Church in Leominster, celebrated by Worcester bishop Robert McManus.
More photos of the workshop are on CMAA’s member portal site.